Asimov's Future History Volume 4 (51 page)

“Rick.” Alysha’s voice was low, but firm … Let me speak. If joining those people means so much to Amy, then maybe she should.” Ricardo’s face paled as he turned toward his wife … I know she disobeyed us, but I think I can understand why she felt it necessary. Anyway, how much trouble can she get into if a City detective’s with them? They seem harmless enough.”

“Harmless?” her husband said … Going Outside, deluding themselves that —”

“Let her go, Rick.” Alysha pressed his hand between both of hers … That young woman told her the truth. You know it’s true — you can see what the Department’s statistical projections show, whether you’ll admit it to yourself or not. If there’s any chance that those people with Elijah Baley can leave Earth, maybe it’s better if Amy goes with them.”

Amy drew in her breath, startled that her mother was taking her side and confronting her father in her presence. “You’d accept that?” Ricardo asked … What if the Spacers actually allow those people off Earth — not that I think it’s likely, but what if they do? You’re saying you’d be content never to see your daughter again.”

“I wouldn’t be content — you know better than that. But how can I cling to her if she has a chance, however small, at something else? I know what her life will be here, perhaps better than you do. I’d rather know she’s doing something meaningful to her somewhere else, even if that means we’ll lose her, than to have to go through life pretending I don’t see her frustrations and disappointments.”

Ricardo heaved a sigh. “I can’t believe I’m hearing you say this.”

“Oh, Rick.” She released his hand. “You would have expected me to say and do the unexpected years ago.” She smiled at that phrase. “How conventional we’ve become since then.” She gazed at him silently for a bit. “Maybe I’ll go with Amy when she meets that group. I should see what kind of people they are, after all. Maybe I’ll even take a step Outside myself.”

Her husband frowned, looking defeated. “This is a fine situation,” he said. “Not only do I have a disobedient daughter, but now my wife’s against me, too. If my co-workers hear you’re both wandering around with that group of Baley’s, it may not do me much good in the Department.”

“Really?” Amy’s mother arched her brows. “They always knew we were both a bit, shall we say, eccentric, and that didn’t bother you once. Perhaps you should come with us to meet Mr. Baley’s group. It’d be wiser to have your colleagues think you’re going along with our actions, however odd or amusing they may find them, than to believe there’s a rift between us.” Her mouth twisted a little. “You know what they say — happy families make for a better City.”

Ricardo turned toward Amy. “You’d do it again? Go Outside, I mean. You’d actually go through that again?”

“Yes, I would,” Amy replied. “I know it’ll be hard, but I’d try.”

“It’s late,” her father said. “I can’t think about this now.” He stood up and took Alysha by the arm as she rose. “We’ll discuss this tomorrow, after I’ve had a chance to consider it. Good night, Amy.”

“Good night.”

Her mother was whispering to her father as Amy went to her room. Her father had backed down for now, and her mother was almost certain to bring him around. She undressed for bed, convinced she had won her battle.

She stretched out, tired and ready to sleep, and soon drifted into a dream. She was on the strips again, riding through an open arch to the Outside, but she wasn’t afraid this time.

The City slept. The strips and expressways continued to move, carrying the few who were awake — young lovers who had crept out to meet each other, policemen on patrol, hospital workers heading home after a night shift, and restless souls drawn to wander the caverns of New York.

Amy stood on a strip, a sprinkling of people around her. Four boys raced past her, leaping from strip to strip; for a moment, she was tempted to join their race. She had come out at night a few times before, to practice some moves when the strips were emptier, returning to her subsection before her parents awoke. More riders began to fill the slowest strip; the City was waking. Her parents would be up by the time she got back, but she was sure they would understand why she had been drawn out here tonight.

Her parents had come with her to meet Elijah Baley and his group. The detective was a tall, dark-haired man with a long, solemn face, but he had brightened a little when Shakira introduced her new recruits. Amy’s mother and father had not gone Outside with them; perhaps they would next time. She knew what an effort it would be for them, and hoped they could find the courage to take that step. They would be with her when the group met again; they had promised that much. When she was able to face the openness without fear, to stride across the ground bravely as Shakira did, maybe she would lead them Outside herself.

She leaped up, spun around in a dervish, and ran along the strip. The band hummed under her feet; she could hear its music again. She bounded forward, did a handspring, then jumped to the next strip. She danced across the gray bands until she reached the expressway, then hauled herself aboard.

Her hands tightened around the pole as she recalled her first glimpse of daylight. The whiteness of the snow had been blinding, and above it all, in the painfully clear blue sky, was a bright ball of flame, the naked sun. She had known she was standing on a ball of dirt clad only in a thin veil of air, a speck that was hurtling through a space more vast and empty than anything she could see. The terror had seized her then, driving her back inside, where she had cowered on the floor, sick with fear and despair. But there had also been Shakira’s strong arms to help her up, and Elijah Baley’s voice telling her of his own former fears. Amy had not gone Outside again that day, but she had stood in the open doorway and forced herself to take one more breath of wintry air.

It was a beginning. She had to meet the challenge if she was ever to lead others Outside, or to follow the hopeful settlers to another world.

She left the expressway and danced along the strips, showing her form, imagining that she was running one last race. She was near the Hempstead street where she had met Shakira.

The street was nearly empty, its store windows darkened. Amy left the strips and hurried toward the tunnel, running along the passageway until her breath came in short, sharp gasps. When she reached the end, she hesitated for only a moment, then pressed her hand against the wall.

The opening appeared. The muted hum from the distant strips faded behind her, and she was Outside, alone, with the morning wind in her face. The sky was a dark dome above her. She looked east and saw dawn brightening the cave of stars.

The Robots of Dawn

3424

1: Baley

1.

E
LIJAH
B
ALEY
FOUND
himself in the shade of the tree and muttered to himself, “I knew it. I’m sweating.”

He paused, straightened up, wiped the perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand, then looked dourly at the moisture that covered it.

“I
hate
sweating,” he said to no one, throwing it out as a cosmic law. And once again he felt annoyance with the Universe for making something both essential and unpleasant.

One
never
perspired (unless one wished to, of course) in the City, where temperature and humidity were absolutely controlled and where it was never absolutely necessary for the body to perform in ways that made heat production greater than heat removal.

Now
that
was civilized.

He looked out into the field, where a straggle of men and women were, more or less, in his charge. They were mostly youngsters in their late teens, but included some middle-aged people like himself. They were hoeing inexpertly and doing a variety of other things that robots were designed to do–and could do much more efficiently had they not been ordered to stand aside and Wait while the human beings stubbornly practiced.

There were clouds in the sky and the sun, at the moment, was going behind one of them. He looked up uncertainly. On the one hand, it meant the direct heat of the sun (and the sweating) would be cut down. On the other hand, was there a chance of rain?

That was the trouble with the Outside. One teetered forever between unpleasant alternatives.

It always amazed Baley that a relatively small cloud could cover the sun completely, darkening Earth from horizon to horizon yet leaving most of the sky blue.

He stood beneath the leafy canopy of the tree (a kind of primitive wall and ceiling, with the solidity of the bark comforting to the touch) and looked again at the group, studying it. Once a week they were out there, whatever the weather.

They were gaining recruits, too. They were definitely more in number than the stout-hearted few who had started out. The City government, if not an actual partner in the endeavor, was benign enough to raise no obstacles.

To the horizon on Baley’s right–eastward, as one could tell by the position of the late-afternoon sun–he could see the blunt, many-fingered domes of the City, enclosing all that made life worthwhile. He saw, as well, a small moving speck that was too far off to be made out clearly.

From its manner of motion and from indications too subtle to describe, Baley was quite sure it was a robot, but that did not surprise him. The Earth’s surface, outside the Cities, was the domain of robots, not of human beings–except for those few, like himself, who were dreaming of the stars.

Automatically, his eyes turned back toward the hoeing star-dreamers and went from one to the other. He could identify and name each one. All working, all learning how to endure the Outside, and–He frowned and muttered in a low voice, “Where’s Bentley?” And another voice, sounding behind with a somewhat breathless exuberance, said, “Here I am, Dad.”

Baley whirled. “Don’t
do
that, Ben.”

“Do what?”

“Sneak up on me like that. It’s hard enough trying to keep my equilibrium in the Outside without my having to worry about surprises, too.”

“I wasn’t trying to surprise you. It’s tough to make much noise walking on the grass. One can’t help that.–Bust don’t you think you ought to go in, Dad? You’ve been out two hours now and I think you’ve had enough.”

“Why? Because I’m forty-five and you’re a punk kid of nineteen? You think you have to take care of your decrepit father, do you?”

Ben said, “Yes, I guess that’s it. And a bit of good detective work on your part, too. You cut right through to the nub.”

Ben smiled broadly. His face was round, his eyes sparkling. There was a lot of Jessie in him, Baley thought, a lot of his mother. There was little trace of the length and solemnity of Baley’s own face.

And yet Ben had his father’s way of thinking. He could at times furrow into a grave solemnity that made it quite clear that he was of perfectly legitimate origin.

“I’m doing very well,” said Baley.

“You are, Dad. You’re the best of us, considering–”

“Considering what?”

“Your age, of course. And I’m not forgetting that you’re the one who started this. Still, I saw you take cover under the tree and I thought–well, maybe the old man has had enough.”

“I’ll ‘old man’ you,” said Baley. The robot he had noted in the direction of the City was now close enough to be made out clearly, but Baley dismissed it as unimportant. He said, “It makes sense to get under a tree once in a while when the sun’s too bright. We’ve got to learn to use the advantages of the Outside, as well as learning to bear its disadvantages.–And there’s the sun coming out from behind that cloud.”

“Yes, it will do that.–Well, then, don’t you want to go in?”

“I can stick it out. Once a week, I have an afternoon off and I spend it here. That’s my privilege. It goes with my C-7 rating.”

“It’s not a question of privilege, Dad. It’s a question of getting overtired.”

“I feel fine, I tell you.”

“Sure. And when you get home, you’ll go straight to bed and lie in the dark.”

“Natural antidote to overbrightness.”

“And Mom worries.”

“Well, let her worry. It will do her good. Besides, what’s the harm in being out here? The worst part is I
sweat,
but I just have to get used to it. I can’t run away from it. When I started, I couldn’t even walk this far from the City without having to turn back–and you were the only one with me. Now look at how many we’ve got and how far I can come without trouble. I can do plenty of work, too. I can last another hour. Easy.–I tell you, Ben, it would do your mother good to come out here herself.”

“Who? Mom? Surely you jest.”

“Some lest. When the time comes to take off, I won’t be able to go along–because she won’t.”

“And you’ll be glad of it. Don’t kid yourself, Dad. it won’t be for quite a while–and if you’re not too old now, you’ll be too old then. It’s going to be a game for young people.”

“You know,” said Baley, half-balling his fist, “you are such a wise guy with your ‘young people.’ Have you ever been off Earth? Have any of those people in the field been off Earth?
I
have. Two years ago. That was before I had any of this acclimatization–and I survived.”

“I know, Dad, but that was briefly, and in the line of duty, and you were taken care of in a going society. It’s not the same.”

“It
was
the same,” said Baley stubbornly, knowing in his heart that it wasn’t. “And it won’t take us so long to be able to leave. If I could get permission to go to Aurora, we could get this act off the ground.”

“Forget it. It’s not going to happen that easily.”

“We’ve got to try. The government won’t let us go without Aurora giving us the go-ahead. It’s the largest and strongest of the Spacer worlds and what it says–”

“Goes! I know. We’ve all talked this over a million times. But you don’t have to go there to get permission. There are such things as hyper-relays. You can talk to them from here. I’ve said that any number of times before.”

“It’s not the same. We’ll need face-to-face contact–and I’ve said
that
any number of times before.”